Welcome to Charming, where swirling petticoats, the language of flowers, and old-fashioned duels are only the beginning of what is lying underneath…
After a magical attempt on her life in 1877, Queen Victoria launched a crusade against magic that, while tidied up by the Ministry of Magic, saw the Wizarding community exiled to Hogsmeade, previously little more than a crossroad near the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In the years that have passed since, Hogsmeade has suffered plagues, fires, and Victorian hypocrisy but is still standing firm.
Thethe year is now 1893. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.
Show a pattern of selfish behaviour with your character. You should have at least three threads (ten posts, three+ yours) of your character doing cruel things. Character accounts cannot be combined.
Did You Know?
Queen Victoria was known for putting jackets and dresses on her pups, causing clothing for dogs to become so popular that fashion houses for just dog clothes started popping up all over Paris. — Fox
It would be easy to assume that Evangeline came to the Lady Morgana only to pick fights. That wasn't true at all. They also had very good biscuits. — Evangeline RowleinCheck Your Privilege
September 1st, 1893 — Ravenclaw Tower
Fourth Girls' Dormitory
Unlike much of her house, Cordelia Best did not linger in the common room following the late evening of the Sorting Feast. Peopled out, she did as she did every year on the first night: retreated to her dormitory with a small cake her mother had sent with her (it was her birthday, after all) and one of her textbooks. This year, she would be getting a jump start on the new charms work.
The dormitory door was not soundproof, and sound from the common room sometimes carried. Tonight's chaos proved to be one example. If ever Cora doubted her decision to retire early, this would not be that occasion.
Still, Cora would not be a Ravenclaw without some category, and so when a (rather deflated-looking, in her estimation, though perhaps she was projecting) Millie Potts entered the dormitory, the fourth year closed the book and sat up straighter against her headboard, having already settled under the sheets for the evening.
"How was the rest of your evening?" Cora asked tentatively, a cautious, closed-lipped smile on her lips.
It was as if every step conspired against her that night, trudging the familiar path to her dorm room. The adornments were just the same as the year before, the beds laid out in exactly the right places, and her trunk already positioned in her spot. She should have felt nothing but warmth and comfort from her home-away-from-home, but tonight Millie felt nothing but dread.
Cora was already there when she entered and dropped her boots next to her trunk. Millie felt no pretense or impropriety about throwing herself right on top of her bedsheets. The down comforter cushioned her body, and the arms she folded over the pillow cushioned her forehead. Yet there was little that could cushion the young witch's heart right now.
She was too busy picking up the pieces to respond to her dormmate. They must have scattered across all of Ravenclaw Tower, Millie decided. She was stretched thin enough so that must be the case. Without the strength to keep herself together any longer, the young witch let out a long, whimpering sigh.
Millie didn't cry. No, her eyes rested on her sleeves, and they dried anything that might have come out. She sniffed, and breath caught in her throat, but she did not sob and wail like a first year away from home for the first night of her life. And yet, she was still rubbed raw by the incident in the common room, and the condemnation she saw on the faces of Professor Foxwood, Minnie, and the first years she might have been an example to this year.
"What a bloody good example I make!" Millie muttered deplorably, slim comfort to herself. Whether Cora heard it or not, the young witch couldn't even begin to think about responding properly. She wanted something, anything, to soothe the ragged edges of her reality right now. Her novels were still packed away in her trunk, their inspiring words too hidden away to matter. The words of a friend would do, if they could get through.
Her smile fell, her brows knitting together in concern. Cora couldn't recall the last time she saw the other witch so upset, and the fourth year wondered if she oghtn't've asked after all. Millie was now sprawled upon the coverlet, the very picture of dejection.
"What happened?" she asked more softly, eying her roommate intently. Cora was not about to let Millie go to bed upset, lest the other girl be plagued by bad dreams and wake up feeling even more troubled tomorrow. No, she would pry—gently!—as much as needed, though hopefully would not make matters worse.
Millie knew she couldn't stay on the bed like this. Her clothes would be terribly rumpled tomorrow if she left them on, and they might tear when she turned during the night. It would be impossible to change out easily in the dark once everyone was asleep as well, and horribly rude to light a lamp to see by. Still, even as the evidence mounted against her, Millie refused to budge.
Even Cora's words took their time soaking into her puddle of misery. She turned her head toward her dormmate, already tucked under the covers in bed. It looked so cozy to her, nudging the young witch in the same direction. Instead, she let out a groan and a whine, "The world is cruel and the only morality in a cruel world is chance!"
It might have been a quote from a book, not that Millie could recall which now. She pried herself up from the pillow enough to face Cora better, with a face drawn longer than she had ink. "We just lost a mountain of points!"
Just saying that made it all too real for her. Millie's stomach squirmed with the pang of regret, and she fell back on her side with her arms around her belly. If she pressed hard enough, perhaps she could stop her insides from revolting against her so easily.
September 16, 2023 – 8:26 PM
Last modified: September 16, 2023 – 8:26 PM by Cordelia Best.
"Come now," she chided gently from her vantage point at the next bed, "I'm sure it wasn't that bed. What's five, ten points? It's still so early in the year!"
Cordelia had altogether missed the carnage of the evening and truly believed Millie to be overreacting in the extreme.
"Forty!" Millie belted out, and it took all her willpower to say it aloud. She pressed her hand so tightly into her stomach that she might have cried from that alone. Nothing made her feel better, nothing could plug the hole burrowing its way from her heart to her stomach. Cora could share in her pain, at least, that was something. "Professor Foxwood just took forty points off of Ravenclaw!"
The knowledge clawed at her stomach, chewing her from the inside out. How had her night turned so sour, so fast? She hardly remembered eating dinner now, the hungry void in place of her stomach sapped even that memory from her, too. All she could do was lay there in a restless gloom and a mind whirling with thoughts.
"We didn't deserve that," the young witch groused in a lower voice. Her eyes found the blue and silver emblem mounted in their room, and she looked away. It hurt to think of what shape her House was in, and what everyone in the school would certainly learn all about tomorrow. She couldn't face that level of humiliation, that wasn't supposed to happen to Ravenclaw!
"It's not fair!" That wasn't supposed to happen to her either, not this year!
Surely, Cora thought, she could not have heard correctly. Surely Millie was distressed at Ravenclaw having lost fourteen points—a rather specific total, but not unheard of; disappointing so early in the year, but not nearly so distructive as for-as the alternative.
No. The other Ravenclaw had never been a defeatest (a fact about which Cora could not help but be slightly jealous) and would not be making that face if it had only been fourteen points lost by the house.
"Good Lord," the fourth year breathed, brown eyes widening. She hadn't thought the evening could possibly get any more exciting than it had been during the Sorting.
(Oh, how she yearned for a more positive excitement!)
"How did this happen? Professor Foxwood—it's his own house! What would drive him to do such a thing? Who would behave so terrib—" Cora snapped her mouth shut, looking at Millie questioningly. She did not wish to make her dormmate even more upset if she had been the cause of the loss.
Cora's shock didn't really help assuage the other Ravenclaw's guilt. Her hand pressed so tightly against her stomach, Millie worried she might faint. Here in their dorm, in bed, she was safe. It just didn't feel that way. The decorations and trim of their bedsheets, proudly bearing their house colors, made her stomach feel worse every time she looked at them.
"I don't know, I don't know!" Millie insisted, trying to make herself believe it. Her hand pressed even tighter against pangs that refused to quit. The young witch knew better than to keep it all in, twisting on itself until she might vomit or pass out. It was only the fear of what might come out that kept Millie's hand where it was.
"It's all because of that Valenduris bit of..." Millie's hands suddenly flew to her mouth, both of them, to stop her from whatever word was about to leave her mouth after that. She snuck a breath through her fingers, and let go experimentally. "No, it was Miss Fairfax and Miss Parkinson. Minnie, you know the way she talks, was making observations about our new Miss Valenduris."
Millie didn't want to involve her part in that yet. Her stomach complained again, drawing a comforting hand back to settle on top of it. "Professor Foxwood took all those points off because Autumn got into a row with Minnie over it. A real violent one, with fists and tearing and blood..." She was getting worked up over all of it again, breaths coming short and quick. "Oh, it was awful Cora!"
She really felt like crying now. Or vomiting, the whole affair was a toxic poison in her belly. Millie didn't know if she'd ever feel the same again.
Jessamine Parkinson. It did not seem at all outside the realm of possibility that she would be involved—Cora found the older girl altogether intimidating, and could not fathom Millie's being so familiar with her. Indeed, Miss Parkinson was better off avoided if one could not be assured of being on her good side.
But Millie's explanatin came quickly and in fragments; the Ravenclaw found it difficult to piece together the narrative.
"Fists?!" she exclaimed in genuine disbelief. She could not recall ever seeing fisticuffs in the common room—and certainly not from female students. No wonder Millie was so shaken!
A closer friend, or a less awkward one, would go to the other girl, Cora knew. The best the Ravenclaw was able to muster was to swing her legs over the side of the bed, so that she might get up, might cross the distance.
"Was Professor Foxwood terribly angry?" Cora asked in hushed tones. "He knew you'd nought to do with it, didn't he?"
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